Crickets

I have an irrational fear of crickets. It wasn't always this way. Me and crickets use to get along fairly well. In fact, we use to own a lizard and i'd go catch crickets like nobodys business and feed them to our lizard. I never even thought twice about it. BUt then everything changed in the 5th grade. I was getting ready for school and i went outside to our garage to grab my shoes and put them on. As soon as i tied them up, i felt something moving by my toes in one them. Oh man, did i freak out. I tore my shoe off (yes without untying it, my dad would have been appalled!)and shook it till this little cricket fell out. Okay, one cricket in my shoe, no big deal. I let the poor thing hop away and put my shoe back on. Not more than a minute later, do i feel more movement in the toe of my shoe (same shoe!). Once again, i ripped off my shoe and shook it out, 3 more crickets fell out. That's a problem. One freak encounter with crickets, no big deal, but there's more.

Fast forward a couple years to when we move to St. Louis, and then another couple years to when i moved to the bedroom downstairs. Our basement always has crickets in it. Not just any crickets, but spider crickets. I don't know where they come from. Crickets are worse than spiders because you go to smush them and they just hop away. It turns into a pursuit. I wouldn't mind it so much, but i draw the line when they start attacking you in the shower on a daily basis. I don't appreciate having crickets jump from the shower curtain onto me, especially when i have no clothes on.

The icing on the cake though is being awoken in the middle of the night by an itch on your face, and when you go to scratch it, you feel a cricket crawling on you. nasty. More than once i've found crickets in my bed. It is not a pleasant way to wake up. I have a fear that one night one wil crawl into my mouth. Ugh...i would cry.

I bring up my fear of crickets because i had a dream the other night about one. I was out hiking with my family in the park and we found a cricket. And i'm not sure why but my Dad decided to pick it up. And then, i'm not sure how he did it but he wanted to get a better look at it so he enlarged it and made it roughly the size of a basketball. (I think this part of the dream comes from the fact that i was watching Harry Potter the night before and one of the professors used magic to enlarge a spider) and then he asked if i wanted to hold it and i said no, but he brought it over to me anyways and put it on my shoulder and it started crawling up my face and then i wokeup in a panic.

Now that I've been thinking about them after typing up this blog, i'm starting to feel all itchy and get all paranoid that something's crawling on me.